KEY FOCUS QUESTIONS:

How were black Americans treated?
Why did the government not stop racial discrimination?

Early years
The struggle for equal rights for Afro-Americans in America has a struggle as long as European settlement itself.

alabama-slave.jpg
The first Africans arrived in Jamestown Virginia, the first permanent European settlement in 1619. Gradually their status changed from bound or indentured servants, who were legally contracted to work for another for aset period, to that of slaves.

The American Civil War which lasted until 1861 to 1865, the ending of slavery which resulted from the defeat of the Confederacy, and the consequent amendments to the United States Constitution which guaranteed equal rights to all Americans, regardless of race, were supposed to be settled once and for all the problem of black people in America.

US CONSTITUTION
Amendment XIV(1868)

All persons born or naturalised in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law abridge the privileges or immunities of the citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law;nor deny any protection to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.




1920s
Black Americans did not share in the prosperity of the 1920s in the USA. In 1920 about 10 per cent of americans were black and most of them lived in the Southern States that, sixty years earlier, had been the slave owning Confederacy in the Civil War. In spite of the end of slavery, black Americans, continued to suffer from racial discrimination.



HANDOUTS AND POWER POINTS:

Look at the Power points on Declaration of Independence or investigate the Declaration of Independence and Civil War.

Map of Souther States of America